Finding Sakura
by Awkward English
Summary: Itachi is on the hunt. He is looking for a certain pink haired child and his murder and terror will not end until she is found. AU
1. Chapter 1

Part One

1

The bullet entered Itachi's head slightly above and behind his left ear, and the air pocketed with the report. The shot jarred him off balance and his tense face hurtled sideways, blurred like a swiftly unwinding bobbin of thread.

Thrown out loose by the recoil, his upturned hand wavered daintily in the air, his fingers bent back twitching under the weight of the dangling revolver. Suddenly he slumped, his head bending forward as if to curtsy, then bolted erect. Itachi staggered forward a step or two, swaying from side to side; the revolver jiggled from the end of his thumb and he fell headlong in the high grass.

His adopted sister Sakura, who was almost eight and the youngest of the Uchiha children, watched him go down. She was standing less then a feet from him when it happened, close enough for the resounding shock of the noise to hurt her ears. Clutching the tin pail with the nine berries in it, which she had picked and counted, she hurried to reach him. Small for her age, she squatted beside him, peering him. "Itachi," she said, leaning down through her spread knees. But if he saw her or heard her or knew who she was, he didn't respond.

He burrowed among the yellow stalks of the grass, lurching and rocking up and down, as if he were trying to lift himself and crawl. Spasm flew through his body like tiny flickering fish. Then he stopped moving. Slowly his head settled on the crook of his unbuttoned sleeve shirt. The hurt side of his face was bone white and it was blood-pocked and embedded with grit, like a knee scraped on gravel. His eyes were half shut and red. In the cheesy-white skin above his ear, the ruptured carbuncle of the wound was crusted with black dust. A rising puddle of bright blood filled his ear and broke down across his cheek.

Again Sakura spoke to him, a nudging worry in her voice. "Itachi," she said, "you better get up." But she didn't comprehend the terror of what had been done or the gravity of the pain it could cause; she couldn't believe it was real until she touched him.

Irresistibly, even as the dread knotted tight inside her, she lowered her fingertips to the side of his face. Ever so lightly and gently. And the skin where there was a cool-hot and clammy like a fever.

"Itachi," she whispered, "what'd you do?" She was about to pull away when something happened: she lost her footing or her hand shook of itself, and her fingers smeared across the sticky blood drying on his cheek. At first she couldn't breathe; when at last she caught her breath, a shriek rode out of her body so high-pitched it snapped in and out of frequency. It was like a corrugated sound she couldn't stop. She jerked back, kicked back, flinging out her hand. Sakura turned to her feet and turned, and turned, stumbling in an aimless zigzag, her cry continuing as shrill and piercing as a chalk squeak.

She ambled in loops, unable to get her bearings. Again and again, she found herself coming upon him. She wanted to pick him up, impossible as it was. She kept thinking, I should pick him up and take him home. But she knew she couldn't lift him -he was nearly twice her size. Each time she saw her blood dirtied fingers, she screamed. With the air almost gone from her lung, she finally gasped, "Itachi….Itachi…Oh, Itachi," so frightened she couldn't call for help. She kept her bloodied finger extended before her. She didn't know what to do -she couldn't dirty her dress, put _blood _on it. Suddenly Sakura dropped to her knees, wiping her hand viciously on the grass, pulling out clumps of the grass and scrubbing it across the palm of the bloodied hand. Again, inadvertently, she touched him, his arm this time.

She sat back on her haunches. Breathing hard and moaning, she wiped her face on her hunched-up shoulders. She couldn't bear to look at him but she did look and the blood was trickling out now in pink foams -from his nose and mouth. Quickly, she squeezed her eyes shut; she put her hands on top of her head, one on top of another, and just sat there, still and numb. "Oh, Itachi," she babbled in her desperation, "I wish you wouldn't do things like this to me." After she said it, she thought it sounded something their mother might say. She sat there beside him on her haunches, unable to help him, afraid to touch him. And she covered her eyes with her hands but she couldn't stop the tears from running through them. At last, shivering uncontrollably, she pushed to her feet and whirled away, running for home.

2

The ambulance rushed Itachi towards the nearest hospital that day while people around the neighborhood stopped by to share their concerns.

Sakura sat halfway up the stairs, clutching the varnished railing, peering down at the commotion. Above her, on the dark landing of the stairs, Sasuke Uchiha, who'd just turned nine, stood motionless in his pajamas as if by being quiet he could hide. He'd stay in bed that afternoon and evening with a croupy summer cold. They listened as the mother franticly spoke, explaining how her husband was alongside Itachi through the ride while she watched the children at home, her spouse refusing to allow the children to see their wounded brother. Finally, sobbing as she spoke, she blurted out what she wanted most. "If he has to die," she said, "at least his family would be together to see him one last time."

3

By the time their father arrived still dressed in his work clothes, the neighbors had long left. His proud figure was stressed with fatigue that revealed his age by the deep wrinkles that drew under his eyes. He stumbled through the door, saw their mother and turned towards her, unsteady on his feet. And their expressions were so tender and full of longing they were painful to watch. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she kept saying over and over again. They stood less then two feet apart, unable somehow to touch each other, their eyes full of tears. She said to him, "All my life I've been afraid of something like this."

When he could speak, their father said, "I plan on staying overnight with him, and I'll come back tomorrow at noon to bring the children." Their mother nodded and rushed towards the kitchen to prepare her spouse lunch while he followed, failing to notice his children still sitting on the stairs. They overheard their parents soft conversation with large words such hemorrhage, condition, critical.

Sasuke came down the stairs to sit next to Sakura, who could feel the head radiating from his body; when he bumped against her, she cringed from him. Clasping his arms around his shin, he said, "Can I stay down here with you?" he was trembling all over like a rabbit. She couldn't begin to tell him how awful she felt; her skin seemed to draw tighter and tighter, and the ache of dread and regret sank deeper within her. Without looking around, she said, "Sasuke, he was dead, I think. He's really dead. I reached down…" she began to sob.

As her voice shriveled, he let out a shuddering sigh. "He can't die, Sakura. He just can't, y'know. He can't die and you can't die and I can't die, because we're all brand-new people. Him and us."

The weird logic of what he was saying escaped her.

Downstairs their father dispersed, muttering an awkward goodbye to his wife. Afterwards, their mother spotted both her children on the stairs and sat alongside them, embracing them each with both arms.

"He was such a good boy in school," she said quietly. "He aced right through school without any of our help. Imagine, raising such a genius." she went on talking calmly about his ups and downs for quite a while. "I really don't get it, he lived in a perfect house, had a perfect life with a perfect family, and now….this!" Struggling for breath she cried out again, more easily then before now that no one but her children were there.

4

Sakura heard her mother across the hall. She went to Sasuke first. Drifting in and out of sleep, Sakura heard the soft rumble of her voice. A drawer squealed open, the shut.

Through the open window came the distant funnel-like shouts of the children playing in the yards below. Despite the residue in her distress and the mood of strife that had descended on the house that night, the cheerful noises beckoned her like a slow, enticing music. Her eyelids wobbled; she dozed. Immediately it seemed, although it could have been longer, an angry uproar erupted in the gray distance-the neighborhood's dog lashed out, growling and barking. Sakura thought, those boys are tormenting him again. IN her imagination, she could see them sneaking along the right-of-way behind their house to throw rocks into the dogs pen. All hackles and teeth, the dog would lunge at them, his snapping chain flipping him crosswise in the air. He was a crazy-mean dog with scary eyes, and the bet was to see it they could goad him into breaking his chain. Once in a while he did break it, his teeth slashing at the fence wire.

"Oh Kisame," she muttered. Sakura wanted to get up, poke her head out the window, and yell at them to stop it. She reached for the bedpost to pull herself up, but in the air her fingers bumped across a scratchy face. Her entire body flinched. She lurched crablike on the bed to escape it. The room was full of sunshine to see clearly. With her pulse pounding, she rubbed her eyes and squinted. "Oh, Mommy," she gasped. "You scared the daylights out of me." Her mother was seated on the small chair by her bed.

"Sakura," she said, so softly, and her face turned pale like a foggy image of herself. "I want you to tell me some things." Again Sakura wiped her fist across her closed eyes, and when she looked once more, her mother stared back.

Sakura scooted up the pillow, but stammered, said nothing.

Flattening her hands on her knee, her mother asked where the gun came from; did she know where Itachi got it?

He's dead, Sakura thought and, slipping out from the twisted quilt, remembered the detail earlier that day.

"He had no business with that gun," her mother said. "Somebody's just as responsible for this as he is. I mean to find out who that is."

This time he's dead, Sakura thought, and they won't tell me. And the sickening ache that stayed with her though the night spread vividly along her nerves.

"I'll find out," her mother continued, "one way or another. So you better tell me. Sakura, do you know where he got that gun?"

She shook her head. She wanted to tell her without lying that Itachi lied all the time, that e told her different made-up stories about how and where he got the gun, but she shook her head.

"Let me hear you say it."

She muttered, "Dunno." and asked was he dead. Her mother glanced toward the elm twig tree scratching at the windowpane. "Maybe he will be." she sighed. For a moment, her eyes glazed. "probably." She's lying to me, Sakura thought. Itachi's already dead. Her mother cleared her throat.

"Sakura, do you know anything about this?"

Matching the cadence of her words, she again shook her head, five, six times.

"Why'd he shoot himself, Sakura?" her mother pressed on, studying her face. "His life was perfect, so why would he want to end it? I just can't see. Why would he do such a thing? You were around him all the time. If anybody knows about this, you do. You're the one. You have to.

"I really like him." Sakura said and nodded, without looking up.

With a defeated sigh, her mother left the room, quietly closing the door behind her while Sakura continued to listen Kisame's barking in the distance.

**Yeah, I made shark-face into a dog. I have my reasons. Yo.**


	2. Chapter 2

**1**

Several months had passed by since the incident. It was not five-thirty that early august morning when Sakura left the house by the back porch steps. In her dress pocket she carried two lumps of sugar; in her right arm she carried her favorite doll, Pooh. The severe change in the light from the interior of the house to the brilliant glare to the yard blinded her.

Hugging Pooh, she shielded her eyes, stepping into the cooler house shadow. She followed the walk parallel to the house until it ended, then hurried across the wet grass. At the hedge, she ducked into the tunnel made by the thick branches of the privet hedge and adjoining iron fence.

All but hidden from view, she crawled down the length of the iron fence, dragging her dolly with her to the end of the yard, where she emerged in the thicket of ragweed and the goldenrod and wild crape myrtles. She stood and dusted her knees.

She crossed the weedy right-of-way.

She could hear Kisame before she saw him -a low, throbbing, nerve-numbing growl. The pen was constructed with two high fences, on set aside the other, because when he was mad enough to break his chain, Kisame could chew through one layer of the fence in nothing flat. The back of the pen faced the right-of-way; its front and gate were flushed with the neighbor's backyard, which meant she would have to skirt the fence and enter their yard in order to reach the gate.

Picking her way carefully, she started down the sloping embankment alongside the fence. The low throb of the dog's growl neither quickened nor faltered.

More then halfway down the side of the pen, the weeds gapped and she saw him; the ruff of his blue hair framing his pug face, the slanting Chinese eyes with no irises, just black holes to see through, the muzzle of his blue mouth drawn back on long slashing teeth, saliva hanging from his jowls.

It was the face of absolute rage and, as always, for the moment she found herself mesmerized by it, unable to move. He must have sensed her fear -the low, guttural growl rose an octave. Slowly he came to his feet, the chain attached to his collar clinking as he stood.

His matted tail curled up and back on his hindquarters. His dust-mottled coat fell at odds with itself alongside his shabby length, clotted with chunks of dirt. He was no longer growling; his navy blue lips were stretched thin, his nose ridged. Then he sprang, hurtling through the air, his growl twice as loud as it had been, teeth snapping, cracking together on empty air, till the chain caught , whipping him backwards.

He hardly touched the ground before he flew at Sakura again, his massive black muzzle ripping though the air only two feet away.

Frightened, she fumbled in her pocket for the sugar. The first lump crumbled to powder in her hand, and she quickly pulled out the second one. She reached through the outer fence and tossed the lump into the pen, underhanded.

As often as she'd come here with Itachi to bring the dog some sugar, these first minute never became any less terrifying.

"Kisame," she said, but her voice sounded shaky. She tried again, forcing a firmer voice. "Kisame, you stop."

He stepped over his chain and backed away, eyeing her.

"There's your sugar. There it _is_." Sakura pointed to where it had disintegrated on the ground.

His pug face came up tilted and quizzical.

"There." she said, pointed again. "You know me, don't cha? I'm going to come see you now. You better be a good boy. Don't you bite me."

His growls were mellowing to short, snorty grumps and groans. He barked at her once, ran sideways a few steps, dragging his chain, and barked again, then he ambled towards the sugar, sniffing the ground.

Itachi said it was no wonder the dog was mean, because his owner beat him, and their father said that was his privilege; it was his dog. But Itachi pitied him enough to start bringing him sugar. He said they understood each other.

When Sakura opened the gate to his pen, she stepped directly into the bare circumference of his chain length and allowed Kisame to sniff her from the bottom. After his inspection, he nuzzled her and licked her with his black tongue.

First he licked her face, then he licked her sugar-dusted palm, and finally, while she held it open, he licked the inside of her sugary pocket. Sakura petted his face and told him Itachi was hurt. The rolled-back tail twitched.

She talked to him. She told him he was a good boy.

Afterwards, she patted Kisame once more, slipped from the pen, and went home the way she had come, down the tunnel of the hedges to the walk and into the kitchen, catching the screen door.

**2**

Her parents never spoke of Itachi's injury. To them, it was no longer a question whether he was going to live or die, but when he would get well, as if his condition were a disease they could conquer together.

Several days passed from the incident, then weeks, turning into months before slowly a year had passed. Itachi's thirteenth birthday came and went, still trapped in a coma, while Sasuke's birthday passed as well.

On Tuesday evening, November eighteenth, Sakura took a bath by herself, sweetening the bathwater with splashes of perfume and a cake of L'Eau de Paree.

Sitting before her mother's vanity with a powder puff in one hand and the atomizer in the other, she dampened and patted her face and with still another coat of perfume. She cut her hair, using the fingernail scissors, until it looked worse than when she had started, but she still liked it.

She dressed herself in her very best Sunday clothes -her taffeta dress, her white shoes and socks -and she carried her pink plastic purse with thirty-one cents in it. She waited that evening on the stairs and on the settee and at the dusty dining-room table.

Her mother went and patted her head. When her father, who had recently visited Itachi, came home at seven-thirty, he told her to go change out of her play clothes and come help him get ready for supper.

Sakura laid across her bed and cried. On that day, she was nine years old.

Somehow, Sasuke realized what had happened. When they were getting ready for bed, he gave her a present. "It's for your birthday," he said, and handed her the old cuff-link box, unwrapped. "Go ahead. Open it." Inside was his skull ring, like the Phantom's. A while ago, he'd sold his small knife and saved box tops and sent away for it; it had one red eye and one green eye.

The ring was just like the Phantom's ring in the funny papers; it could dent your jaws and leave its mark forever.

"But Sasuke," Sakura said, "I can't take _this_! That's your ring you sent off for."

"You have to." he said. "I don't have nothing else you'd want." The back of the ring was adjustable and he bent it to fit tighter on her finger. He told her it would probably turn her finger green, but in that moment it became her most favorite of all her favorite things. She wore it to bed.

**3**

A few nights into February, as Sasuke set the supper table and Sakura laid out the plates, their father came from the living room, his face was contorted and alive. He tried to speak, but his mouth just worked and his eyes open wide. Sasuke said, "Dad, what's wrong?"

"He talked to me." he stammered. "Just now he talked to me before in the hospital. Our prayers have been answered. Just then, he said, 'I'm hungry.' That's it-it exactly."

Their mother ran to embrace her spouse while Sakura did the same to her brother, laughter filling the room.

"Just you wait, you'll see." her father said. "You'll see."

The following afternoon their father ordered them into the car and drove all the way to the hospital. When they arrived, he rushed them into Itachi's room and made the children stand with him besides the makeshift bed. "I want you all to feel how much heavier his arm is. He's getting stronger. Really, he is. So much stronger. I can see it."

The arm placed first in the upturned hands of Sasuke, then in Sakura's, seemed heavy, but they didn't know how to gauge it.

It was another three weeks before the end on February, before Itachi opened his eyes. According to their father, this time he said, "Dad, I'm so tired." The doctor was called and their father spent the night over there.

"You can see him tomorrow. There's plenty soon enough." he explained over the telephone.

"Do you think he'll remember us?" Sasuke asked. Sakura only shrugged.

**4**

It was after school when the children had walked home together when they saw their father's car parked outside the driveway. He drove them over to the hospital to visit their eldest brother.

The purity of the winter light magnified Itachi's room, making it appear vast and sparsely furnished. The patients bed was pushed in the corner near one winder, allowing for them to soak in the light from the sun.

Charged with anticipation, but not knowing what to expect, Sakura lagged behind Sasuke. She kept her eyes fastened on the lounger as they went to join their father on the far side. She leaned forward as she walked, trying to peer around her mother's shoulder; after a few more steps she could see Itachi propped up on pillows, his head pitched slightly upward. She moistened her lips and swallowed hard.

All this time, her father was speaking to Itachi in a soft voice. "He's doing fine. Yes, he is. Just fine, but look how tired he is. He's slept so long he wore himself out. So tired…"

Vaguely nodding and swaying, Itachi's head lifted by slow degrees.

It was as if everything disappeared. Only his incredible red eyes looked up from below his eyelashes, and the room began to slide around Sakura. The smart-alecky, devil-may-care glint that had been so much a part of him was gone; in its place was something hard, cruel, and blunt.

She wanted to scream, NO! he's not all right. He's not just fine. His eyes are wrong. Can't you see? It's all wrong!

As for as long as the moment lasted, it was like a horrible dream that wouldn't go away.

Then, as if moving through heavy air, Itachi lifted his hand towards her and her mother's voice broke though that stricken impression.

"Sakura, don't be bashful," she said. "Take hold of his hand and tell him who you are, because he remembers you, really he does, but he's kind of confused. Everything seems so brand new to him. You'll have to help me watch out for him. Will you do that? Help me take care of him?"

Deliberately, Sakura nodded. She wanted to take his hand and help him, and then she did take it and she knew she must never tell them that he wasn't fine, because he was her brother who watched over her and taken her out and played.

For now he couldn't be anything but fine, because now that he was coming back, he was really all she had.

**Oh yea. R&R. Thanks for those who did, yo.**


	3. Chapter 3

**1**

They knew from that day on that he would never be the same as before the shooting, and yet it was like an unspoken secret they kept to themselves. Their parents acknowledged nothing but the glory of his improvement, and the others, Sakura and Sasuke, realized instinctively what had to be done. With subtle, innocent glances, they communicated what they couldn't say out loud, what they couldn't put into words if they wanted to, except to admit that he was different; changed.

The glint was gone. They missed his smirky smile, his cockiness, and the gleam of mischief in his eyes, but with their silence that wore a cocoon around the truth -around the pain and sorrow and disappointment.

Within the week Itachi was finally allowed come back home in stable care. Their father was more like his old self then he had been before the accident. Humming, he gave his wife a kiss and instructed the kids to sit with their backs straight.

As soon as Itachi could sit up for any reasonable length of time, their mother had tied pillows to the back and the seat of her grandfather's rocker, and when their father came home back from work, he carried Itachi to the dining table and placed him on the padded rocking chair.

In that way, he was with them each evening. With his blank red eyes, Itachi appeared more confused then docile, and when he did not looked confused, Sakura saw the hardness in his glance that chilled her to the heart.

**2**

Seldom was he crossed, and even more seldom did he complain, but he had frightening spells when he blacked out. In the beginning, only the simplest acts made sense to him.

Did the sandwich taste good? "It's good," he'd say, staring into the distance. When he slumped back on the pillows and their mother asked if he was tired, "I'm tired," he's say, "…sleepy," as if the connection between the two words were abstract and difficult.

And when it was nine o' clock and he wasn't sleepy, she gave him medicine to put him to sleep. In time he did remember who they were and called them by their names -their father initially, then Sasuke, then Sakura, and then their mother.

It took a long time; he seemed to have dredged their likenesses from the depths of his memory. But everyday he grew a little stronger and a little more aware.

And their father's praise of him never faltered. Whenever home from work, he spent most of his time coaxing him to walk another step, to take one more bit; he urged him to speak without slurring.

"How strong you'll be," he would say. "As good as new. Now that's my good boy." As if he couldn't leave the past behind.

But Sakura thought, not for long will he be good. Not for a very much longer.

**3**

During those months, those slow, rainy months when the winter telescoped into the spring, Sakura gently shared her things with Itachi, even when he had no patience and tore her paper dolls or sent the toy lead soldiers she'd chosen for his Christmas present flying under the swipe of his hand.

When everyone else was out of earshot, she'd tell him about Kisame.

"I took him one of your old socks," she said, "so he'll remember you." In the chair too high for her, she sat beside his bed, talking quietly as their mother hovered nearby, or when he was finally able to walk from one chair to the couch to the doorway. Sakura stood with him. She wanted to talk to him, really talk to him, but the chance didn't come and he was very reticent about talking to her. In all those early months, he didn't think to ask what had happened to him.

"I'm hurt," he could say.

"Yes," their father would answer, "you hurt yourself. But we're going to fix it. You'll be good as new."

At the supper that summer, their mother said, "He's getting too strong for me. It wears me out just to have him lean on me. He's almost as solid as a rock.

"Five foot two and eyes of blue." Sakura said..

"You mean five foot four and eyes of red." Sasuke corrected.

Sakura only shook his head. "Doesn't rhyme." she grinned.

**4**

One day, weeks later, their father came home grim-faced and ushered the children out of the kitchen while he spoke with their mother.

"Was the matter, Daddy?" Sakura asked.

With his fingers, he smoothed the sweat on his neck.

"Oh," he said, preoccupied, "Nothing's much. We have to decide what to do with Itachi."

Then, for several weeks, every night, it seemed after Sakura and Sasuke had gone to bed, their faint voices rising sporadically through the joist and plaster and lath like buried hearts. On the nights she couldn't sleep, she went quietly down the landing to listen. Their voices sometimes buzzed and hummed inside the walls; only pieces of what they said came to her undistorted.

One night, their father said, "I'm going to do what the doctors said to do. Or else, before we know it, it'll be too late." And her mother replied "Not yet, please not yet. haven't you seen how well he walks? He's doing so well. Just today I was thinking we should move him upstairs. He needs more time. Give him a little more time, dear…another few weeks." A shadow came to the lighted doorway below, and Sakura slipped up the stairs.

Another night, she had to go all the way down the stairs to hear. Light glowed beneath and closed kitchen door; she inched towards it. "Doc Lasher said he needs tests and he needs specialists. Even if we can't be sure. Maybe he'll never-"

"Yeah, alright." her mother's voice. "If it's for the best."

A long silence followed. One of them stirred something; a spoon tinkled against china. Her father said, "He's been out of the house again. I checked his shoes this morning when I got up. And they were wet."

On the landing, Sakura hastened up the remaining stairs and back into her room.

But she dozed and tossed and dozed again. The house was settled into a deep plinking silence, like a well. She couldn't think what it would be like to be put away, except it was only like a room with bars in it. Every few minutes, she woke up slick with sweat. She had to tell him, warn him.

In the deepest ebb of the night, she made her way down the dark stairs, crossed in front of the window fan that rustled her pink hair and made her suck in breath, and entered the living room through the double doors, now left open. Her father slept sprawled on the couch. Sakura paused long enough to watch the slow, even fall of his breath. Then she hurried toward the white island lounger.

To hide, she knelt on back, shadowed side of it, checked the dark peripheries, and nudged Itachi's shoulder. As smooth and controlled as ball bearings, his eyes flipped open and they were like lightless eyes of an animal stirred suddenly from an alert sleep.

Placing her fingers straight against her lip, she whispered, "Sh-h-h." He started to raise himself on his elbow, but she motioned him down.

"Itachi," she said, uttering his name so low it was hardly more than the shape of her lips. "We have to go away. Go far, far away." She couldn't tell if he was listening. Like a cobalt disk, his eyes were fixed on her, unblinking and expressionless. "We have to go, Itachi, just as soon as we can. I'll let you know when. Maybe Saturday when they go upstairs to sleep. If we don't go they'll go away and put you in a place with bars in them. It's true! I heard 'em."

Though quiet, his voice was gruff like a man. "They did this, didn't they?" he said.

"What?" she murmured, "Did what?"

"Hurt me, to make me stop."

"No, but they're going to if we don't leave . So we have to. Or they'll put electricity things on us and make us talk like they did on T.V."

"I know what they did," he said, shifting his head on the pillow. "I'm trying to remember…all day." The words oozed from him, his eyes beginning to squint. "I looked in the mirror. I had to do something. And I had to do it."

"but they're going to-"

"I know what they're trying to do. I heard them." Then he said, "Look." He slipped his hand under his pillow and pulled out a crumbling white pill. His sleeping pills. "I fooled her." His mouth worked and a strange broken smile widened his face. He started to giggle. "I fooled her." And he laughed.

For the spark of that moment, he was the Itachi again, having a good time and nothing else mattered. She couldn't help it; she was laughing too. And as she laughed, she whispered, "I love you, Itachi Uchiha."

Itachi put his hands over her mouth and she put her hands on top of his, because if he stopped laughing, maybe she would too, but it was too late. Their father stumbled towards them. "What do you think you're doing? It's the middle of the night."

They looked up at him, no longer laughing.

"Well, come on. Somebody tell me."

"We're just telling jokes." Sakura said.

"Oh Sakura, you don't know any jokes. Now run back to bed."

That was on Monday.

**5**

On Thursday evening, while Sakura was playing hopscotch outside on the rigid sidewalks and Sasuke with his own race cars, when their mother had called them in for supper.

As they took their place in the dining room, their father sat across from her, his eyes glaring.

Sakura gulped.

"Bring Itachi in here." he barked towards their mother, who wasted no time to obey her husband's order. As she did so, their father pulled out a duffel back and dumped it onto the table. Sakura flinched.

"Guess what the neighbor found while they were cleaning up Kisame's dog house?" He was fuming, his words sawing across her nerves.

"Dad?" Sasuke called, his voice a small squeak.

"Sasuke, go to your room. Go sleep."

Once Sasuke left, her father dumped out the items in the duffle bag; dozens of guns, knives, and even a pack of cigarettes spilled out.

Keeping her eyes downcast, Sakura felt the fine prickly goose bumps nibble her leg as worry gathered in her mind. She still didn't move, sneaking up at the angry black eyes who stared back.

"Is there something you want to tell me now?"

She did not flinch; her eyes began to smart.

"Sakura, you were in on this from the very beginning. You're just as guilty as he is. Maybe more. All along you've lied to me and your mother. Now tell me don't know about this." He spat at the contents on the table, a look of absolute outrage.

"What am I going to tell all these people-all our neighbors."

A web of beamy light skimmed across her eyes. She couldn't gulp her tears away any longer. She twisted from her seat, but he caught her in midair and thrust her down in the chair.

Her mother brought Itachi into the dining room, with Itachi in front. In an oversized hoodie, plaid boxers, and his pirate baseball cap, the boy looked like any other strappling thirteen-year-old, except for his cold, blank eyes.

Immediately, he saw the jumble of weapons on the table and sauntered to a stop.

"Itachi," their father said, "have you seen any of this before?"

Sakura saw the realization flicker on his boyish face. Almost imperceptibly his expression drew tight -his jaw muscles clinched, his brows peaked slightly as he squinted, the rekindled hate flowed in his eyes.

"I've been trying to remember." he said under his breath.

"Oh, you remember, all right. There's nothing wrong with your memory." And he slapped Itachi's face with the flat of his hand so hard that it made a loud pop and Itachi stumbled and fell.

"Daddy don't hurt him," she cried, "Don't hurt him! He didn't know any better."

The bile in her throat was so sour it burned. She tried to cover her mouth but couldn't in time, vomiting into her hands and in front of her dress. Everything blurred. Doubled over, she retched and vomited and blindly stroke the air. She didn't know when her mother came or where she came from, but she was there, holding her at the waist and forehead.

"That's it. Get it out. Let it all out." the room and side of her mother's face swarmed out of Sakura's focus. She couldn't find Itachi.

**6**

Sakura couldn't remember being taken to bed that night or how the two hearted-shape pillows from the sofa came to be under her head.

She awoke in her petticoat as Itachi lifted her in his arms.

Nestled upright against his chest, she put her tired arms around his throat and shoulder into a loose hug.

"Are you okay, Itachi?" she murmured.

She could feel him nod against her hair.

"What time is it?" she asked, her voice as droopy as her eyes.

"Almost daylight." he said.

"Where are you taking me?" she asked. Slowly the room wheeled; she nodded against him lightly as he walked. Still blinking with sleep, she glanced down the slope of his shirt, seeing the cuffs of his pants and the slide of the carpet beneath them.

"Far away." he said. Blades of cut grass were stuck on the back of his shoes.

Sakura batted her eyes hard. "Pooh," she moaned, still woozy. They went back for it; he turned and stooped and she caught the stuffed animal's ear with her fingers; they turned again.

The door to her room rasped as it opened and they went though it, with Sakura jogging gently against him. They crossed the top stairs.

"Are we going now?" she said.

"I'm taking you to a safe place." he replied.

The pictures in the stairwell loomed up and passed beside her as they went down the stairs. "One last thing I got to do," he said, "then I'm coming for you." He turned on the hallway landing and went on down and she bounced with him, the top of the stairs receding and curving away with every downward step.

"Something smells funny," she said, "like gas." Her voice snagged and bumped on his shoulder. "I think I smell smoke."

"I got it ready to blow," he said. "Everything's fixed. It's already started."

"Why?" she asked, still yawning, fighting back sleep.

"Is Sasuke comin' with us?"

"He's alright, he's here."

As they cut though the foyer, he dropped almost to his knee and they moved down and up like a climbing ladder.

"Put this around you." he said, and covered her with a quilt.

"It's wet." she whined.

"That won't matter." he said.

She squirmed under it, shrinking from its icy chill, and she felt it run wet on her cheek. She wiped at it with her hand she kept around his shoulder and saw a large stain. It took a moment for her to realize it was blood.

"Oh Itachi, did you hurt yourself again?"

They went though the kitchen. "It's not so bad," he shrugged, "just a nick."

She tried to twist forward and sit on the perch of his forearm, but he held her pressed tight with his hands between her shoulder blades.

"But it's getting on me. All over my petticoat."

"Then we'll have to take it off."

Later, she could remember him telling her to cover her mouth with wet quilt as they went though the basement door and he turned sideways in the doorway to swing the door shut with his elbow.

Sasuke sat cowering in the corner, where Sakura rushed alongside him. The air was mottled dark and hazy in the basement -one lonely cricket chirped along with the methodic gringe of his shoe.

She peered over her wet mask.

Great swarming coils of smoke hung between the black studs.

**7**

In the last few minutes of the night, as the warm rising dew eddied and idled on the ground and Kisame lumbered from his open pen, an explosion emptied the air like a massive spontaneous eruption.

At approximately four-fifteen that day, it was concluded that four bodies were discovered, two adults and two children, the adult's body charred and undeniable, already deceased.

Sakura was admitted to the Luther Memorial County Hospital in stable but guarded condition with second-degree burning on twenty percent of her body.

**8 friendly reviews. You guys are so kool.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Sorry if readers got confused. Sasuke is still alive. **

**1**

Like a particularly devastating dream, the first night in the hospital would remain in Sakura's memory for the rest of her life.

She awoke that night, trying to talk.

"Oh please," she mumbled, "Oh, please don't….oh, please…" her lips shaped the first combinations of words again and again. When she eventually stirred and opened her eyes, she stopped murmuring, because she was in a black place, a steep black hole without shadow or limits.

Where is this? She thought, the deep shudders shook her.

Blinking slowly, she glanced first from one side, then the other, until she could hold her eyes open. But she couldn't see anything, and she was hurt all over. She rolled her tongue on her lips; they were swollen and cracked. The dark was impenetrable.

She tried to get up, but things were stuck in her arms and they pulled and tore as she moved. She felt lifeless and yet her heart was hammering so hard it beat in her ears. Her hand seemed fat as mittens -when she touched herself, they had no feeling. In fact, they were rock hard. She couldn't tell what the things were on her arm or why they were there, though she remembered once Itachi had something similar to this when he broke his leg once.

Where was everybody? She thought, and bits of what had happened began to trickle through her senses. Where's Sasuke? Mommy and daddy? Itachi?

She remembered someone had picked her up and she had glimpsed the burning house. They're all gone, she thought. Oh, Itachi! Itachi! Itachi! She felt raw inside, cauterized with the fearful knowledge that she was entirely alone…forever. They're all dead! I'm sorry, she thought, and said, "Sorry," as tears welled and ran from the corners of her eyes.

She was gasping for breath when she remembered Itachi's promise, and two thoughts cross her mind. They're all dead, except Itachi. He must have got out. Her eyes searched the dark, but only tiny disappearing pinpoints of light met her gaze.

Careful of the things girding her arms, she shrugged up, wiping her face against her shoulders.

Quietly, she said, "Itachi, are you there?" But with her thick lips and tongue, her voice was so unfamiliar she thought that even if he had heard her, he wouldn't know who she was.

She wanted to cry again, but instead she forced her eyes to search the darkness once more. As well as she could, she called to him, "Itachi…," and the fear and anger and longing grew so intense her teeth chattered. "Why didn't you take me with you?" She lurched up and though the darkness, betrayed and forsaken.

"Why didn't you take me with you?" Her chattering teeth chopped her words in two. She wanted to get up; she found an edge to the place where she lay. Something metallic crashed on the floor and the scream rising out of her was like that of a trapped animal, a forlorn and vicious bawling.

A door flew open and, screaming in though the light, white shapes flocked towards her like the hosts of God.  
"Don't take me!" she shrieked. She failed out against them, still screaming and trying to talk, but they gently pinned her down and gave her a shot with a needle.

As the shroud of her loneliness overtook her, she heard one of them say, "It's the medicine that's making you say crazy things. You shouldn't try to talk, Sakura…. You're not making sense. You don't want people to think you're crazy. Now, do you?"

After that night, it would be a very long time before Sakura again tried to speak of her hope and her terror, her love and her wrath.

**2**

She had seen it before in the movies, but she had never expected to have happen to her. To Riku Haruno, she could never truly have explained the sensation of fullness and completion she experienced as she stooped by a hospital bed one evening and little Sakura Uchiha, still dangerously in shock and wrapped in bandages, reached out and grasped her thumb.

The memory of that evening had haunted and held her ever since.

At age thirty-four, Riku Haruno believed that everything always turned out for the best, and that the least significant everyday events were guided by some unknowable, mystical force.

Even in the worst circumstances, her belief seemed to hold true, from this moment back to that time sixteen years ago, when, soon after her eighteenth birthday, she had had to leave home.

Rather then submit to her mother's arrangement and receive an abortion, she had taken the bus as far from home as she could go with fifty dollars. The journey took her to an alien town she had never heard of and behind some abandoned building, that was where she gave birth to her baby.

Young and inexperienced, she lost the baby hours after labor and settled living with her sister in a small apartment. Her sister, Jenny, worked at a nurse in the local hospital and sometimes Riku would tag along with her just to visit some unwanted patients who needed cheering.

She asked for where one patient's room number was at the end of the nurse's station and had started down the hall past the intensive-care unit when Sakura wandered out of a room, her bandages coming loose, getting dirty, and Riku veered from her sister's side to go to her. She took the child's unbandaged hand and said, "I believe you're going the wrong way." and guided her back into the room as nurses darted towards them. Listening to the nurses' chatter, she realized this was the little girl who had survived that awful fire.

A few minutes later, with Sakura safely tucked in bed and the intravenous tube re-attached to her bandaged arm, Riku leaned down to say good night and the little girl grasped her thumb.

She kept promising herself she wouldn't go back to the hospital, but in the middle of the morning or late in the afternoon she would go out for bread or a bottle of milk, or with some other excuse, and drive up the hill to the hospital, looking at the windows, wondering which one was little Sakura's.

She continued on for months, visiting the child as she grew well, spoiling her with small presents and treats. Though the child remained mute, they exchanged warm feelings when their gazes met and she felt her heart melt every time.

That day, she silently called the girl her Sakura.

Sakura Haruno.

**3**

Sakura was fast asleep and dawn had filled the room when Riku had entered. Quietly, she tucked in the little girl and sat on the stool besides the patient's bed. Riku never really paid much attention to the stacks of dolls on the floor -gifts sent by sympathetic neighbors and family friends.

Many of the dolls were still in their original cartons, and the others, without packaging, were heaped on the top, legs and arms protruding every which way.

Riku found the mere fact that they were immeasurably sad, and couldn't bear to look at them for long.

Shivering in the cool morning air, she stretched, wiping her face, and moving towards the window. On the windowsill stood seven red roses in seven thin glass vases, the red buds regressing from fresh to faded. They struck her as excessive and even unwholesome; it seemed inappropriate for someone to be sending rose frequently to a little girl.

She thought of roses as a woman's flower and the frequency implied a lover's gesture, yet… It all seemed ridiculous, Riku thought, blushing at such foolishness.

She glanced for a card and found nothing but a florist's tag. Then she heard hasty steps of the nurses in the hall. She put the tag in her purse, collected her sweater, and whispered, "So long, see you later" to Sakura.

A few days later, in the afternoon, she drove across town to the Forget-Me-Not Florist and wandered among the claustrophobic profusion of flowers on display. When no one came to wait on her, Riku found a woman seated behind the cash register braiding a wreath from greenery.

Riku explained who she was and asked the woman if she could remember who sent the roses to Sakura. The woman who immediately knew who she was talking about, smiled, and shrugged.

"Your guess is as good as mine," she said. "The order came in the mail. I've got the note somewhere."

She flipped though a file and held up a small sheet of paper torn from a spiral notebook. Written in a gawky, childish hand, the note said in cursive: PLEASE SEND 1 ROSE EVERYDAY TO SAKURA AT HOSPITAL TILL MONEY GONE. I'LL KNOW IF YOU DON'T.

That was all. No signature or date on the marking. "Don't that take the cake?" the woman said, her hands again shaping the wreath.

"So we did what it said. Oh, I remember now -it didn't come in the mail. Someone stuck it under the door along with a hundred-dollar bill."

"Is that so?" Riku said, just to keep her talking.

"We think it must've been from her brother, Sasuke; he's living with relatives now. You know, by the handwriting. The envelope was all beat up."

The woman's notion seemed logical enough and Riku laid the small mystery to rest in the back of her mind.

**3**

Once, while Riku headed to pay Sakura another visit, she found the room already occupied by two strangers; a man and a woman.

They both looked rich, each of them dressed in fine clothing decorated head to toe with jewels and accessories.

They glanced up from the child and gave Riku a silent glare.

"Are you Sakura's relatives?" Riku asked.

They nodded that they were. She asked where they came from.

"Japan." the woman said. She asked how their trip had been. "Long and tedious," the woman replied, bored. Sakura had not moved on the bed, her expression slack and remote.

"Does she know you?" Riku asked, and they shook their head. To make conversation, Riku said, "I was wondering -how old is she?"

The woman frowned. "Seems like second or third grade, wasn't it dear?" Taking his time, the man nodded.

The withered roses had been thrown out, but ten tube vases still occupied the windowsill.

"Sakura has such pretty roses," Riku said. "Did you send them?"

"No," the woman said. "We meant to, but we never had the time."

"Is her brother with you?"

"No-o. We left him back at home. We took him in first thing after we received word from the hospital. He was lucky enough to escape with a few scratches and burns."

Then it was quiet.

It was obvious they didn't want her company. Unmistakably they were snobby as they appeared -rich, snooty-speaking businessmen from another country, come to take Sakura away.

The phone rung and the woman picked it up.

"_konichiwa_." she slurred in a different tongue.

Being part Japanese, Riku was able to make out half of what she was saying.

"The boy? Tell him she's asleep. How'd you get my phone number? Finish his registration form for me, the boarding school one. Good, and shut the damn kid up. Bye."

There was another uncomfortable silence.

"Will you be taking Sakura with you?" Riku asked in a rush.

The woman cast a disgust look at the child. "When she's well enough," the woman said. "The doctor said we could probably take her home after her check-up this Wednesday."

The man checked his watch and signaled their leave.

"Just dump her at some boarding school as well. I have no business with her. She's not even related!" the man thundered down the hall.

After they had left, the murmur of Sakura's sleep drew her down like a seductive lure.

"Good lord, Sakura, what will become of you?"

**4**

At noon on Monday, during a meeting with her lawyer, Riku fared no better then the encounter at the hospital. Back in the room, she sat and waited more then an hour so the bearded man would see her.

"There's no doubt," he said, "that you could provide for the child. But -and there's no gentle was to say this -considering that you're alone, never been married, I'm afraid adoption is out of the question. With wealthy, living relatives willing to take her, no court would take your petition seriously."

"I see." she said. Numb with the news, she rode the elevator down, turned the wrong way in the marble foyer, and went out a delivery door. The door locked automatically behind her and she found herself stranded in a grimy alley.

A burst of freezing wind snatched her ivory-colored hat from her head and sent it spiraling up along the inner walls of the sooty brick airway.

She spent the rest of the afternoon in Scranton bank arranging for the withdrawal and transfer of all her money from the bank in town.

Clearly, she had no other choice: she had to do what she had to do

**5**

She found herself in Sakura's room, visiting hours long past over. Just rushing down the corridor and into Sakura's room without getting caught was a blur.

A spill of light from the parking lot outside fell through the large window and onto the corner of the bed. In her haste, before she could see as well as she wanted to, the child's name was uttered, on a rush of breath.

"Sakura?"

Slowly, as her eyesight adjusted to the dark, a flurry of disturbing impressions overtook her other concerns. The room was cold, unreasonably cold. The far wall had curtains that, when drawn, entirely covered two windows.

But tonight the curtains were partially pulled back and a draft of raw wind blew by her and out the lighted door behind her.

In nearly the same instant, she realized that the windows were opened, the thin curtains on the side swelling and shifting and collapsing with the movement of the breeze.

But oddest of all was the air itself. It was as if one of the nurses had dropped a bottle of cheap perfume and decided, rather than clean up, to air out the room.

Good Lord, she thought, what have they done? It made no sense.

Taking up less than half the bed and outlined by the street tucked in around it, the curled-up figure lay o its side, the top end of the sheet clutched to its chest.

Its smudgy eyes seemed locked on a corner of the ceiling. For a stabbing moment, Riku gazed at the door number again to see if she might actually be in the wrong room.

Then, confirming that she wasn't, she wondered if Sakura might have moved to another room.

She took a tentative step forward. "Sakura?" she whispered across the dark depth of the room. "I've come back." but her voice broke.

The curtains fluttered.

Avoiding the light that fell though the window, she moved up past the foot of the bed. There laid Sakura, staring silently into the distance with blank eyes.

As she leaned down towards the while, a cold gust of wind lashed through the room. Half the curtains filled and collapsed so quickly they snapped. She shuddered, all the while speaking quietly, "I'm sorry I took so long to get here, Sakura, but at least I can stop that wind."

She glanced at the curtains once more and then pulled the window shut.

"There," she said, hurrying back.

She turned back to Sakura. It occurred to her to stoop over into the spill of light from the window so the little girl could see who she was, as well to make her feel better.

Sakura was trembling hard, but the smudgy eyes didn't change or respond.

But Sakura…even if she wouldn't look at Riku or say her name, even if she didn't know who this woman was who had come to her every night, and talked to her and read and held her when she trembled, and kissed her goodbye after her visit while slipping a lollipop under her pillow for good luck -even if Sakura didn't care or know or noticed, one day her lips had been purple, the next day orange from the lollipop, and she was getting better.

And tonight, as Riku pulled the gray blanket from the footboard to wrap Sakura in, she told her, "If we have to start from scratch, at the very beginning all over again, one day you will know your name, Sakura, and you will tell me mine."

Sakura was still trembling; Riku had to undo the small fingers one by one in order to pull the sheet down and replace it with a blanket when she pulled it away, however, she discovered Sakura was already dressed in clothes too big for her, but dressed.

Girl's clothes, a size or two too large. Jeans and socks and tennis shoes loosely worn on her as she dressed herself in a rush.

"Oh, Sakura," Riku said, surprised, "were you going to run away? Is it that awful here? Where'd you get the clothes?"

Just then, as she leaned to pick Sakura up, she saw the curtains shift just slightly and below the bottom edge of the curtain she saw _shoes_.

In that instant, everything -Sakura, even herself -seemed surreal. Then, before the sensation had passed, the window light shining though the fabric shown a moving shape, a very distinct shape of a moving figure standing as if wrapped in gauze.

She tried to speak, but her voice was too dry to lift sound; finally, she exhaled, her thin voice carried: "Who are you?"

The curtains stirred and began to part. She couldn't see who it was -the emerging figure was in shadow but all she could remember was seducing red eyes.

Her heart began to stop.

Pulling Sakura up into a gray bundle in her arm, she ran to door and yanked it open.

She rushed along the corridor, through the doors, then out into the clear, cold night, and into the car -driving away before she'd even turn the head lights.

Suddenly something large slammed itself to her side window, a blur of teeth and slobber and a deafening growl. She saw it slide away, but before she could straighten the car, it came again, striking the side window with such force the glass cracked; the creature's blue maw rimpled back on slashing teeth, so close she lunged from it, threw her arm up defensively, and jammed her foot on the gas pedal.

With a loud growling noise, the creature hit the window a third time, its claws digging at the glass besides her face, but by then the minivan had shot forward, bouncing across a low brick wall, it plunged into a shrubbery, jarring Sakura up against Riku.

And Sakura's arm came up across the line of Riku's sight, as if she were reaching for the animal!

"Get down! Sakura! Get down! Dear god, get down, Sakura! Please!"

Evergreens scrubbed the length of the car, swabs of black boughs lashed the windshield, and the steering wheel whipped from side to side under her weakened grip.

The minivan broke though the other side of the evergreens, struck pavement and spun past a parked car, tires squealing.

As she struggled to correct the car, she saw at the rear-view mirror a figure running after them, and something else.

The dog.

No mistake now; she had seen it up close: it was a dog, a damn crazy dog. She was so completely shaken she had cramps all over.

Away she drove, stroking the small head on her lap with one hand while steering with the other, not exactly knowing where she was heading.

**Fuke. Dis chapter blows. Sorry if I didn't put Itachi in here as much, but next chapter will have him telling his side o' story.**


	5. Chapter 5

If there was any chance of catching that woman tonight, Itachi knew, it would be at her house. He crossed the last long fairway behind the hospital grounds, running as hard as he could. Ahead of him, Kisame sniffed the ground, then plunged through the tree shadows, a mottled streak.

As long as he kept going, Itachi could maintain a precarious equilibrium, concentrating on the single thought of getting to the house fast.

It was when he paused to track his direction or lift the rusty tines of a wire fence to climb through that the rage surged in him again, like poison through all his senses.

The unexpected shock of what had happened struck him like waves. The bitch, he thought again and again; the bitch, the lousy bitch.

Leaving the lawn, he jumped into the rough grass.

Back in the dark room, he thought she was a nurse. Since she was dressed in pale going-home clothes, he's thought she was coming in to say good night to his Sakura. As soon as she left, he planned to help Sakura finish dressing in the clothes he had stolen from the clothesline; then he's lower her out the window and escape into the night. But his plan had backfired, because of that stupid _bitch_.

That was why he hadn't moved, hadn't done anything to stop her. And then it was too late to do anything. It was like watching a ball of kite string unwind faster and faster in his hand till it was out of string and his fingers hurt.

The effect of what that woman had done went on hovering beyond his consuming rage and his ability to understand it.

To Itachi, everything was quickly reduced to its simplest terms: if he caught that bitch tonight, he would kill her.

You've really done it, he thought. Now you're dead.

He thrashed through the back edge of the rough and came out on an old cow path fronting the woods. Grasping his knees, he stopped in the barren, his breath loud and ragged, his head throbbing.

Long needles of pain stitched up his arm from his bandaged, burned hand. In the east, the quarter-moon showed a rust-colored curl of light like the rim of partly buried paint bucket.

Kisame trotted up to him, panting, his dark eyes quizzical and his tails rolled back into a dense ball of fur.

"Good boy," Itachi said between breaths. "You did your part."

As if obeying just the sound of Itachi's voice, the big dog promptly sat down. But Itachi hardly paused before he was off again, turning and jogging away. Kisame ran along after him.

The creaking woods closed over them. Running parallel with Itachi, but straying from his side, Kisame loped through the underbrush. On the other side of the woods, Itachi heard the whine of a car on the highway, saw its moving headlights glittering through the trees and then fade away.

It was traveling in the same direction the woman had gone -into town. He had followed her home several times and was familiar with the background.

Five minutes later, on the far corner of Konoha Street and Linkin Avenue, Itachi came to a halt, studying the white framed house in the dim row of houses before him. He ran forward a few steps, then slowed to walk across the intersection.

In his approach, he stayed across the street from the house, walking very fast on the the dingy lawn to silence his footsteps. He could see that the light was on downstairs.

At first he thought it was a man's television set, but the light didn't bounce or flicker; it was a faint, steady light, coming from the hall or kitchen. When he passed the light, the living room was quite dark, except for the beam of light from the other room.

Beside the house, the driveway was empty, the garage closed up. The woman's minivan didn't come back here; he was too late. Without uttering a sound, he slumped where he stood. Kisame came up to him from across the street, his tongue dangling from the side of his mouth and his big grisly face masked behind the white stream of his breath.

Unless the car was hidden in the garage, she'd done it; she grabbed Sakura, and nobody knew.

But me, Itachi thought. Nobody but me.

Down the long wintry street, a car turned toward him and he crouched back against spindly hedges and dropped to his haunches to wait while it passed. He called Kisame to him by puckering and mooching his lips, and the dog lay over on his back to have his stomach scratched.

His muzzle had been bloodied when he attacked the car; his whiskers were now frosted with blood. Still he lolled on his back as Itachi stroked his furry chest. The run had not depleted Itachi's anger, but now his body tensed with an even deeper knowledge.

It's over, he thought, nothing left to lose now, and he began to shake so hard he had to sit on the damp grass and chew on the bandage on his hand to stop. As soon as the fan of light sped past them, he stood and nodded to Kisame to come. He looked up and down the street.

He went to the corner and down the side street, and turned abruptly in the alley, left unpaved and unattended between the various back-yard demarcations. Against his sweaty skin, the wind was biting cold. He chose his steps carefully through the weeds, keenly aware of the noise he made.

After a few more steps, he turned Kisame loose and they hurdled the low iron railing behind the neighbor's house, then crossed the rough earth of the garden, and stood silent behind the ornamental birdbath.

An upstairs window glowed with a pinkish light, not in the woman's room but another bedroom. The glass in the back door shone dimly with the same shad of light he'd seen through the large front window. Somewhere in the middle of the house, then -the dining room or the hall -the light had been left on.

The garage was empty. So the woman who's taken Sakura was gone, completely gone.

His last spark of hope withered, and the necessity of what had to be done settled over him with a weight like iron. Somebody had to know where she was, somebody close to her…and somebody was home.

When the moon drifted free of clouds, it cast him in a pattern of drab, gnarled checkers. He breathed into his hand to trap the white fog spewing from his mouth. Freezing in his jacket, he stamped his feet slowly on the packed leaves. There was no movement or change in the upstairs room.

As he stood there, he knew he would go after Sakura and the woman and find them and bring Sakura back. He would go as far and as long as it took. He would need only a few things.

A picture of the woman would help, and he knew where one was. A letter to her from someone might give him a clue about where she was headed. And money; he's have to try to find some money. Already he was down to his last hundreds.

The house was too easy to get into. He had been in it before. Itachi checked his jacket pocket, and felt reassuringly the weight of the old leather-covered blackjack he'd found and taken one night from a desk drawer; and, in the other jacket pocket, the flashlight disguised as a pencil.

In his pants pocket he felt the ridge of the folded knife with one of its two blades broken off.

Kisame whimpered and stood, and sat down again. "You stay here," Itachi said. "Don't let anybody in. Don't let _anybody_." Kisame squinted his slant eyes and licked his muzzle.

Waiting for the light to go out, Itachi scooped two pain pills from his coat pocket and ate them dry from the gauze hand. He knew where the fuse box was, if it came to that. The medicine nibbled along his nerves and flared in his brain, numbing the throbbing ache in his hand and behind his eyes.

He waited for his vision to clear. Then he entered the house.

**2**

Jenny Haruno opened her eyes and the room was dark. For a moment only her eyes moved, skimming the night in the room for some half-remembered disturbance. She blinked and rubbed her eyes.

Shrugging higher on the pillows, she reached for the base of the lamp and slipped her fingers up the celluloid switch. It clicked; she blinked, but the darkness remained intact. Quickly she turned the switch two more times. Again nothing happened. She stared toward the flute lampshade with disbelief.

She wondered if the bulb had burned out as she slept-if, in fact, the quiet pop and sizzle of it going out hadn't been what had awakened her. She was thinking about how long it had been since she'd change the light bulb when she glimpsed the faint movement in the darkened doorway across the room. Her head had been turned toward the lamp when she saw the shape wrinkle and fluctuate on the outer edge of her eyes.

Twisting toward it, straining to see the doorway clearly, she heard the unmistakable slap of a shoe.

Jenny leaned forward on the bed to listen more carefully, and the house became a vast jar of stillness. Rising from its depths came the noises, tiny isp and spots of sound: the grind and clicking rotation of a doorknob turned, followed by the mute yawn of a door opened, and, under all the noises, the sound of that one faulty shoes. It's Riku, she concluded, nodding thoughtfully. That would explain everything. Just her dumb sister trying to scare her.

Peeling back the covers, she stood up from the bed, shrugged into her flannel robe, and cinched the sash and went to go follow the noise, but froze, remembering Riku had called a while ago to explain she wouldn't be back home for a while.

She hung in the air, waiting to hear the retreat of footsteps and the quiet closing of the downstairs door, but neither happened.

The wait grew interminable. At last the slow flap of shoe recurred, but her racing heartbeat interacted with it too much for her to tell where he was. Through the bedroom door, open to the stairwell, she watched the lights of a passing car swell and disappear.

Her visitor was moving much faster now; she could hear his urgency so plainly that she decided he had to be upstairs, but she couldn't be certain. The darkness swarmed her eyes: the night air thickened to the consistency of molasses. He was stumbling through the rooms -once she was convinced she heard him in Riku's room -attacking the house with a heedless, fumbling haste. His impatience tightened her nerves.

She heard a glass breaking, not once but repeatedly, and endless small shattering noises. That time the noise seemed to come from downstairs. A drawer shrieked open, then shut. Another drawer opened. Apparently he was looking for something in particular, rushing violently about his search.

Let him take whatever he wants, she thought; then he'll leave. She had decided he could have anything if only he'll leave, when she remembered hiding Riku's valuable and cash inside the vase on the stairs.

She ached all over and wanted to cry.

When she took a step forward, abruptly all the noise stopped. Jenny began to move helplessly through the room, searching about for some defense while she listened for the flapping shoe.

There was utter silence.

Suddenly she heard an angry snarl of drawn breath in the doorway bedroom. Her muscles crawled under her skin, her inertia spread to her will. Everything stalled.

The figure seemed hardly to move; it was like a shadow collecting density from the dark. She saw the shape contract and expand, emerging toward her. Fear rose through her throat and broke from her lips in airless whimpering. Absolutely frozen, she couldn't move or speak, couldn't think what to do.

She saw that her intruder had a wrapped hand and when he spoke, his slow, guttural voice was as cold as ice water tossed on her face.

"Where's that woman?" he asked. "Where'd she take Sakura?"

Oh, not that, she thought, but the voice had spurred her to her senses. One of his hands, the unwrapped one, came up holding something that looked like a black baby rattle.

It wobbled soundlessly on the top of his fist.

"You shouldn't be here," she tried to say, but her voice a sticky whisper. "You're in the wrong house."

The moonlight bloomed brighter in the room and he was coming through it. Her breath backed up.

"Why," she said, "you're just a boy." A very tall boy in fact, and extraordinarily handsome as well.

The blow struck her across the cheek with astonishing velocity. It felt as if she had been hit in the face with a bolder. Her jawbone and teeth exploded; a bolt of intense white light seared the backs of her eyes, burning down like embers, and incomprehensible shock waves of pain erupted in her brain.

One side of her face began to puff and contort. He caught her as she fell and time stretched like elastic. She felt herself immersed with him, and his gamey animal smell was vile.

His arms came up around her in a kind of embrace and clasped over her throat, front and back, and he wrenched her head backward and to the side. A sharp, distinct, very loud crack broke the air -from the base of her skull outward she grew very numb and cold, instantaneously. She fell, crumpling hard.

Her head lolled to the side.

She tried to move it, but couldn't.

She tried to move her fingers, but couldn't.

Inches from her tilted eyes, she saw one shoe with a many-knotted shoelace and one sock foot. A pool of light snared and dazzled her face.

Stooping down, her assailant smile upon her with perfect white teeth to match his perfect features.

"You're dead," he rasped. "And that woman…You're all dead." He snatched and tore the words with his teeth. "I'm gonna string her up and gut her like a god damn dog." Then he told her to shut her eyes.

From outside, the angry growling and barking came even louder.

Jenny heard her assailant move from her side, his feet twisting fast on the carpet. She strained to open her swollen eyes to slits. She saw his shape step over her, wagging his flashlight.

She stared up at the eyes of Death.

**3**

Riku had rented a hotel room under the name of Mr. and Mrs. Moore, claming her husband would be arriving later to join her and her daughter.

As soon as the bellboy had left, Riku shut and locked the door, closed the drapes and the blinds, and turned to Sakura. The green eyes drilled into her from the middle of the room.

"Well, now, Sakura, what do you think of this?"

She expected no answer and she got none. She took off her mink coat, a gift from her mother eight years ago, removed the hairpin with the diamond eye, and laid her hat on the dresser.

"Aren't you warm?" she said. "let's take off your coat." She unbuttoned and slid the new jacket off Sakura's small shoulders.

"Now, isn't that better? Yes, it is." With some surprise, she noticed that Sakura was still wearing the small identification bracelet of beads from the hospital. It gave her a moment's start; had anyone in the lobby seen it? Would they know it came from a hospital? It was unlikely; she decided she was over reacting.

She went over and ordered dinner, and as she came back, she caught Sakura scratching at the crisp skin under the bandage on her hip, and trying to reach back to her shoulder.

'Oh Sakura," Riku said, "what are you doing? I know it must itch, but you shouldn't do that." As the sound of her voice, Sakura stopped scratching and twisted away. So this was to be glimmering of recognition Riku had waited for. She quickly smeared cream on the read fingernail marks and pulled the hem of Sakura's jumper down.

"You'll make scars." And she showed her the jar of cold cream and where it was kept in her purse; she told Sakura how to use it when she itched, because itching meant she was getting well -took one little finger in her hand and dipped it in the cream, and guiding her, let Sakura smooth it on her own cheek.

There was a tapping at the door and a boy wearing a red pillbox hat trimmed in gold, and gloves the color of mice, delivered their dinner, and it didn't matter, as she carried the tray into the room, that Sakura had globbed cream on her face and in her hair and all down her front. It didn't matter. Riku laughed and said to her, "My goodness, Sakura, did you itch all over?"

With a towel from the bathroom, she wiped the cream away as quickly as she could and went to make sure she had to remember to lock the door. Sakura's plate was so large that she had to hold it with both hands to eat.

"Okay," Riku said, "I need you to stand up." She took away the half empty plate and set it next to her own, then helped Sakura stand.

She unbuttoned the long-sleeved dress in the back and worked it off her arms. "I bought you some new pajamas."

But of course Sakura didn't answer. Her unyielding stare was now focused on the litter of cloths at her feet.

After Riku finished dressing her up, she turned on the radio and picked up Sakura and danced around the room with her. The girl had a puzzled expression on her face, but later it disappeared into a small smile at the corner of her lips.

Riku tossed her head back and laughed, then kissed the girl's forehead. This body she was holding was so frail and vulnerable, light and skinny. Pain ached her heart and she stopped jiggling with the girl and placed her down on the bed.

"Don't you worry, I won't let anything harm you ever again, you hear?" As the child nodded slowly, eyes half drawn shut, it had occurred to her how tired she must be after a long road trip and Riku tucked the child in.

**4**

Keeping her eyes shut, lying absolutely still, Sakura waited that night for sound she thought would never come -the woman's breath drawn deep and slow in sleep. She waited a little longer until there could be no doubt that the woman was sound asleep. Then, crawling silently, Sakura touched the side of the bed and slid to the floor.

Holding the hospital bracelet and a pencil in her fist, she slowly searched the darkened room until she came to the table with the case of flowers on it.

Stuck in among the flowers was a small white envelope with its flap stranding open. Slowly she pulled it out. Inside the envelope was a printed cards. And the backside was blank. There, Sakura wrote: STOP HER SHE GOT ME FROM HASPIDL.

Then she out the card in the envelope and slipped the bracelet in, curled around so that it would fit inside the envelope, too. She licked the flap and sealed it.

**5**

When they stopped at the Shell filling station some time later, to buy gas and go to the ladies room, Riku did not see the small hand come from the pocket; nor did she see Sakura place the envelope on the chair where the station attendant had been sitting, reading his newspaper. Her back was turned.

**I busted my ass trying to climb a tree. Then I got stuck up there. Then busted my ass coming down. Yo.**


	6. Chapter 6

Only the sound of footsteps and the soft padding of Kisame's paw broke the night silence. Itachi did not hesitate or look back, striking deftly through the dark countryside. "Goddamn her." he muttered under his breath; "goddamn her to hell," the words like a chant, marking his stride. The pills held his pain to a low humming at the back of his brain.

Itachi hated this goddamned dirty street in this goddamned place in the middle of nowhere. He hated the houses looming in the distance and the sound of muddy river he could smell even when he couldn't see it, and he hated the dirty peace of snow that were beginning to fall.

He drifted back to the sidewalk in front of the house. The old rage was flowing now, and nothing could stop him from striking back. Cold wind whetted his eyes and his mind whirled as he stomped back and forth in front of the house, the dog turning with him. He was casting about for something to use, anything that would really hurt. Already that woman was still inside, why he didn't kill her was a mystery to him. Yet already he was regretting it.

Anything to ease his anger.

He walked a few paces up the sidewalk and back came back. Then he went towards the garage.

He was gone for about maybe five minutes before he reappeared on the buckling rise of the sidewalk. He uncapped the square tin can of a lawnmower gasoline he carried, tipped it over, and let it gurgle and pour down around the house. When it ran out, he struck a match, dropped it at the top end of the dark streak, and watched the fire shoot and climb toward the door.

Inside the place, the fire roared; but he was hurrying away, ducking between parked cars across the street, ran across the yard, into the alley where he dumped the gas can to the garbage.

He kept running while Kisame ran along next to him. Once he was sure he was far away, he stopped and rested, giving Kisame a pat as he sat down. He wondered how long it would be before any of the neighbors woke up to discover the woman's house on fire and call for help. No sirens wailed in the night and he opened his shirt and removed the papers and pictures he's taken from the lady's house.

Using his flashlight, he studied the snapshot, blown up in frame size, had faded to a bronzy orange. The two woman, the one he'd just hit and the one who'd taken Sakura, were in both the photographs. He immediately folded them, scored them with his thumbnail, and tore them in two.

Then he tore the two halves showing the woman he had killed into little chunks and threw them to the wind like confetti. In the two half-photo he kept, the woman looked younger than she did in real life.

His teeth began to ache from the angry set of his jaw.

From the billfold, he removed the print of Sakura's school picture he had torn from the newspaper, folded it with the two pictures of the woman, and returned all three, in his billfold, to his pocket.

Methodically he flipped through the sheet of papers -most of it yesterday's mail, he guessed. All the envelopes had been opened. He separated them quickly, sorting out the circulars and bills and holding the two envelopes addressed to Riku Haruno. He repeatedly formed the woman's name with his lips: Riku Haruno.

The stack of useless material he tore into small pieces and let them dribble and flutter from his hand as he got up and walked.

The little wad of money he's found after he had broken a vase -five thousand dollars -remained untouched in his jacket's pocket.

Sooner or later, Itachi thought grimly as his hands came down to stroke Kisame, who trotted alongside him, the bitch Riku would come back for her sister and that was where he'd wait.

The sun began to rise and finally the sound of the fire truck wailed softly in the air.

**2**

Although Riku knew it was illegal, she took her phone and dialed Jenny's cell phone number while driving on the road. I just kidnapped a little girl, she thought, and now I'm driving and talking on my phone at the same time. Oh God help me.

Feeling apprehensive, she listened to the distant telephone ring and ring; then it was picked up.

She gripped the cell phone tight against her ear, but still it was difficult to hear.

"Jenny… hello, Jenny?"

"Hello?" A man's voice, defiantly not Jenny's.

"Toni?" He was Jenny's boyfriend.

"Riku…is that you?"

A little breathless, she said, "Yes, Toni, I-"

"Where are you?"

"I'm on the road, Toni. And the weather's bad-"

"Riku..I've been wondering if you'd call."

"Toni, could I talk to Jenny? Is she there? I've been trying to call. I need to talk to Jenny-"

"Damn you RIKU!" his anger took her by surprise. "You know what you did? It's all because of you…"

The voice paused and she heard short wheezing before Toni was on the line again.

"Jenny's in the hospital, Riku." his voice was hard.

"Wha-?" Riku was stunned. Jenny? Hospital?

"The night you left, somebody broke here and beat her up -beat her nearly to death, and then set the whole damn house on fire. She's in a coma, Riku, and doctor's say she's not gonna be anything but a goddamn vegetable the rest of her life. Riku? Are you there? Jenny's in the Kohona hospital. Please come back home and see her."

Riku tried to answer but her voice was strangled in her throat. Tears welled up her eyes. A car honked its horn as it zoomed past her, the teenage driver stuck it's finger at her before speeding off. Again and again, tears fell her eyes and she felt a small hand reach out and comfort her, softly stroking her hair. Oh Sakura.

Stiffing a sob, Riku did a U turn and headed back into town.

Jenny, she thought, I never meant to hurt you, God knows, I'm so tired…worn to a frazzle…can't sleep, can't get hold of myself. I'm coming dear, I'm coming, and if I catch that madman, I swear, I'll kill that bastard if it's the last thing I do.

"We're going back home, Sakura." Riku said, stroking the girl's head.

**3**

Toni hung up and stared into space.

After a few minutes, he quickly unclipped the cell phone and dialed the police.

**4**

"Do you know this woman?" Itachi asked, leading Kisame toward the store.

The man, the cart man, squinted at him and at the photograph. "Sure. She's all over this morning's newspaper. Kidnapped a little girl, right?"

Itachi nodded. "but do you know her in real life?"

"Sure, she used to tip me over 10 percent whenever I helped her load her groceries. You'd never think a woman like her would do such a thing."

"Is that all?" he pressed on. He had gone through town already asking people if they knew this woman. Most of them were useless bystanders, yet he managed to sneak in some information about her.

She liked spicy, asian food. Afraid of dogs, and disliked beer. Although the information was useless, Itachi liked to get to know his victim before he would kill her.

The news went all over town about the two sisters. Almost everyone knew who they were.

He walked along the snow and down the highway, his head pounding. The sleepless hours of walking were beginning to take their toll. His eyelids drooped and blinked. The road was already deserted. It seemed no one wanted to go out and drive on a cold day. The dull ache throbbed in his temples and his eyes watered until he could hardly see. He squeezed his eyes shut momentarily, blinked, and saw a rusty neon sign appearing in the falling snow.

711. Alongside the store was a gas station. He walked another couple yards before it struck him. What had he seen? There it was, parked at one of the driveway: the minivan!

Still, it startled him.

"_That's it_!" he croaked. "_That's it! That's it_!"

Suddenly everything around him grew sharper and his head quit pounding. He walked faster and saw the woman and a girl come out of the store and rushing for the car. Then, clearly, he saw that the girl was Sakura.

"_Sakura_!" he shouted, "_Sakura! Sakura! Sakura_!" He rushed inside an empty car with its keys still in tack with Kisame hopping in the back seat, and by instinct, he started the engine and pressed the acceleration pedal on. How he knew how to drive still was blank in his mind, but he'd wonder how he knew another time.

He followed the woman drive in the distance, his car not to far behind. He wanted to surprise her. He wanted her to beg. Uncapping the bottle, he swallowed his pill.

"Hey," he said to Kisame, "do you see what I see?"

**5**

That awful woman, Riku thought; she'd call the police by now. Back in the gas station, as she went to pay her bills, the lady at the counter pointed her fingers at her and shouted, "Hey! You're that woman from the T.V! And there's the girl! It's you, isn't it!"

Before the girl could say another word, she grasped Sakura's small hands and dashed towards the car.

How awful!

Her heart raced and she could feel the gravity of the danger bearing down on her. She needed some kind of defense, something to restore her equilibrium. Quickly taking her eyes off the roan, she opened the compartment in her car and fumbled through to feel something slick in her hand.

"Is that a gun?"

Ambushed by the child's voice, Riku flinched and glanced back. Next to her, in the passenger seat, sat Sakura with her eyes wide.

"Can I see it? Can I touch it?" Sakura asked, her voice almost a whisper.

"No." Riku said, and they stared at each other. Licking her lips, she stared back at the road.

"Okay," the girl said, "but you don't have to be mad at me,"

The snow continued to fall as Sakura hummed a low melody. It then struck to her that Sakura had talked.

"SAKURA! You can talk!" Riku exclaimed.

Suddenly, the car jolted.

**6**

At fifteen feet, he heard her shout inside the car. Now at ten feet through the ice-crust side window, he could see the mottled shape of her head as the car pulled forward. Stop her, he thought, and he opened his car door. Kisame, breaking through the drifts, jumped outside and raced towards the car. Itachi pulled out the blackjack from his pocket, calculated when to jump, and flung himself at the moving car, his arms whipping around. The blackjack exploded on the side glass with a deafening crash.

At the moment of impact, Riku's head whirled away from the inward spew of glass and she pitched across the seat to hide herself and protect Sakura.

_My God, what was that?_

In that moment she was seized by fear so profound that her heart had wrenched sideways. It took her completely by surprise; she thought someone had shot a bullet. Her hair and her coat caught much of the flying glass, but grains and shivers of it were stuck to her cheek and in her left eyebrow. She was afraid to open her eye.

When the minivan swerved from his blow, the rear fender caught Itachi broadside and knocked him off balance. He spun to his knees and came up, still clutching the blackjack. Again he ran toward the car and the woman inside it, but then another thought hit him and he slowed down his pace.

He could hear the minivan roll away slowly and despite his temptation to run after it, he couldn't. He had another plan in store for her and he licked his cracked lips at the thought. Kisame trotted back to him puzzled. He looked at the car, then back at Itachi and angrily barked, furious at why he had let them go.

Itachi pulled Kisame to him and held the back mouth muffled with his good hand, the unwrapped one, ready to silence him if he started to bark. Already he watched as Riku stopped the car. His face broke into a grin.

**7**

She felt as if an enormous muscle had been pulled to the point of breaking deep in her breast. Cowering in the front seat, Riku gasped for breath and touched the sharp bits of glass on her face. She wiped and picked enough of them away so that she could open her eyes. Miraculously the already cracked side window in the driver's door held, but she wondered if it was safe to sit up. Yet she had no choice; she couldn't let the car idle along any further.

Taking a deep breath, she pushed herself up from Sakura and sat behind the wheel. Her foot trembled on the brake. She looked down to Sakura. The girl's face was terror-stricken, shocked beyond tears.

"Are you hurt?" she asked Sakura, her own voice hoarse with fright.

"I feel pale." Sakura mumbled, white-faced, and began to sob.

**8**

Itachi continued to hike down the forest next to the highway. Tugging the dog, he crashed through the snow in a jog, then tripped on a stick.

His grasp releasing the dog as he went to pick himself up.

When he turned back, the dog was now wandering away through the snow.

Keeping his voice low, he tried to call the dog back, "C'mere." he smooched the air with his lips two times. Kisame stopped and raised his head. "Come on, Kisame, c'mere." urging the dog back, Itachi patted his knees furious at how foolish he looked right about now.

But it was no use. Kisame ran back towards the car, his blue, ragged coat working on his long muscle.

"You ahead then, you bastard," he muttered. But he could see that the dog was moving towards the car. It ran after it and Itachi listened hard as the dog barked far off.

**9**

"Kisame!" Sakura screamed, "Kisame! Kisame! Kisame! It's him! It's him!" she twisted and climbed on the seat, straining to look out. "it's him! It's him! Kisame! It's him!" Her eyes frantic and searching, she pulled the locked knob up with both hands.

The passenger door flew open and Sakura plunged out. She fell in the snow and ran from the car towards him.

"Kisame!"

She threw her arms around his ugly face, all her pent-up feeling overflowing, tears running from her eyes. He barked once, gruff and mean, then nuzzled and licked her face. "Oh Kisame!" she gasped against the swipe of his tongue. "Oh Kisame, let's go! Where's Itachi at?" she whispered. "take me, take me."

The dog back-stepped from her and barked. "Take me home," she said. He started to go, swung his head backed, then barked again and pumped away through the snow. She chased after him.

'I'm comin', Kisame. Wait for me!"

**10**

Immobilized at first by shock and fear, Riku ran out after Sakura, oblivious to everything but retrieving the child. "Sakura, don't! Don't go there!"

She swooped and caught her runaway and it was like holding a wild, screeching cat. All teeth and fingernails, Sakura shrieked and struck out blindly. Riku tried to hold her in a tight clasp.

As they started back to the car, she glimpsed an odd movement in the snow. She looked again and saw a dark snow speckled mass rushing toward her. A wail broke from her lips.

It's that dog!

Swinging Sakura against her hip, she ran for the car. And Kisame hit her like a blast. His teeth snagged her hair and the back collar of her coat. the force of his hurtling body carried them around and lifted her off her feet; Riku could feel the dog hanging her coat, riding with her through the air. They were thrown down like a hard slamming spin. She tried to break her fall with her arm and still holding Sakura; heard her coat tear away as she sprawled across the icy ruts in the drive.

Kisame rolled to his feet once, rending the torn piece of coat like slaughtered meat.

"Oh, Sakura, get up! Try to get in the car!" the dog dropped the piece of fur. Tightening her arm around Sakura, she heaved up. "Get to the car!" she gasped. She knew he was coming, saw the hackles on his back, saw his hindquarters gathering.

Panicked, she stepped to the side and ran, but he was at her, tearing at her, dragging to get her down. She felt he coat ripping on her back as she fell. Sakura squealed when Riku tried to protect her.

"Lemme go!" she yelled. "Lemme go!"

Riku slapped the dog hard across its muzzle, threw her arm up and absorbed the flailing wrench of its jaws. Part of her sleeve was gone. She was struggling with all her might, but he was too fast and too strong, eclipsing her with his hideous weight. The flesh of her ear stung and bled. I'm all in, she thought, I can't stop it, and felt the teeth jab at her body.

With sudden strength, she shoved the dog away and dove inside the car, her hands fumbling for the gun.

When the dog ran to jump on her, she cocked the gun, and let it explode in her hand.

Then it was silent, except when Sakura screamed over and over, "No-o-o-o!"

She knew someone would hear the gunshot and tail after her, so giving the limp dog a guilty kick, shoved it out the car and held Sakura firmly down the seat and sped away.

When Riku glanced at Sakura, her face was tear-strained and her eyes red from crying.

"You killed Kisame." she whispered, and buried her face in her hand.

Kisame? Did the girl know this dog?

**11**

After the sound of a gunshot, Itachi rushed to the scene only to find the car already had sped off and Kisame lying on the ground, limp.

He walked over to the dog, and lowered down to stroke the animal. Amazingly, the dog was still alive and bent it's head forward to lick Itachi. Other then that, it couldn't move a muscle. It was paralyzed from the head down.

"Good boy." Itachi said.

He didn't know what else to do. The dog was now useless and likely about to die anytime soon.

_You bitch._

And the familiar rage surged through him as he watched the car speed off into the distance.

He carried the injured dog aside the road and left him there. As he walked on, he heard Kisame whine behind him, trying to follow him.

Itachi continued walking.

**12**

They stopped by a hotel on the way. Sakura sat alone in the corner, completely ignoring Riku.

The dog and the lady back at the gas station had proved that it was impossible to return back to Kohona to visit her sister without being recognize.

Her hands felt numb from the gun earlier and she brought it to her face to cry.

"Kisame's dead! He's dead! Kisame's dead!" Sakura had wailed all the way until they reached to the hotel. By then, she had lost her voice and simply sulked quietly then on.

The dog, the poor, poor dog. It had no right to die, even if it half killed her back there. The poor, poor dog. Lying on the street, rotting there for all the people passing by to see.

She had to bury it. As absurd as it may have sounded to go back and bury the dog that nearly ate her, she knew it was the right thing to do. And it might get Sakura to talk to her again.

"Sakura, you wait here while I go back and bury the dog, alright?"

No answer.

She outside and started the car.

**13**

The dog's body lied by the side, as if someone had kindly carried it away from the road to prevent it from being run over. Of course, it was already died, and after Riku had buried the body, she wondered who was kind enough to carry him aside. It was dark when she had finished.

As she drove off the highway, she noticed a boy walking by alone, huddled down in his jacket -so shrunken within she couldn't tell if he was even looking her way. Just herself and that solitary boy on this lonely street. She wondered if maybe she should wave him, and decided not to. But she ought to do something.

"You're so nice sometimes," Jenny had said before. "If only everyone was like you."

Such a cruel night to be walking alone, apparently with no one to turn to. The driving snow fell in a hard slant. Maybe she would offer to buy him a cup of coffee. Do kids like coffee?

She remembered she had a box of cocoa among the remaining groceries in the trunk.

She passed the boy. Then she glanced back at him in her rear-view mirror, she could see that he stopped walking and shivered in the cold.

She stopped the car, slipped the gear to reverse, and eased back toward him. He slid into the frame of her side window. Leaning across the seat, she rolled the passenger window partway down and looked at him.

"Where are you heading?" she asked him.

He shuddered. "Dunno." he said. The snow blew between them. She could see he was thirteen, maybe fourteen, and his clothes were ragged and soiled. Snow had collected thickly on his cap, his eyebrows and shoulders; he was shaking with cold.

"You live around here?"

When he spoke, he was shivering so hard she couldn't understand him. In the dim light from the street, she could see that his nose was running and his teeth were chattering.

"You shouldn't be out in this," she said. "How long have you been out here?"

"While," he said finally with some difficulty, the wind draining his voice away. With his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, he seemed to be trying to move in one place to keep warm.

He was a little taller than the roof of her minivan and he leaned toward the window to try to answer her, then straightened again.

"Why don't you get in here for a minute, anyhow? At least get along enough to warm up a little."

He said, "Okay," and quickly reached for the door handle.

She turned the headlights off and flipped the heater knob as high as it would go. "Roll the window up," she told the boy, and he complied.

He tried to hold himself still and could not, so that his chattering breaths came in sudden noisy burst, he was all huddled up, trembling in his jacket. Across the expanse of upholstery, she could feel him shake in his seat. She asked him what his name was and thought he said "Bud."

"What?" she said. "Bud? Is that it?"

He nodded a couple of times very fast. "Yeah," he whispered. The streetlight was skimpy inside the car, yet she tried to examine him closely. The only word to describe him at that moment was handsome. He was simply handsome. Every angle of his face was prefect and she suddenly felt embarrassed for checking a kid out.

'How'd you end up here?"

He ran his hand under his nose. "I just did-" he took a deep breath- "That's all." He looked at her suddenly, almost angrily, and with a swipe of the same hand he scrubbed tears in his eyes.

"Do you have a place for the night?" she asked him quietly.

But he wouldn't answer, wouldn't look at her now, as if, even at his young age, the tears exposed some vulnerable part of him and he felt cheaper and weaker for it.

At least she thought and it made her heart break.

'What're you going to do?"

He shrugged. Finally, he said, "I'll just -I don't know. I'll wait till I catch a ride."

A car came down the hill, casting misty yellow beans through the minivan. For a fraction of a second, Riku's heart leaped.

Police? No.

She took a deep breath. "You can't go back out there. You're just a kid. Nobody'll pass though here tonight, not in this kind of weather. You better come with me."

Dimly, against the sound of the wiper blades, the boy heard her say, "You'll get to meet my little girl," and Itachi turned his face away toward the window and smiled.

**Damn, busted my ass trying to save a kitty on a tree. The beast leaped out of my grasp and I lost balance and fell. **


End file.
